3D printing presents a rather delicate balance between art and science, and each failed project serves as proof. The question is: What do we do with all those "plastic failures"? Some very hardcore enthusiasts have built their own extrusion systems to recover plastic and create new filament, but Trash Printer seeks to simplify the process. The idea is to eliminate the filament and design a print head capable of using plastic waste flakes directly.
From small decorations to a replacement cover for the remote control, to gears, brackets, adapters, and much more. 3D printing is a marvel, and its potential vast. Let's set aside food experiments, house construction, and its involvement in the medical world. 3D printers can radically improve our daily lives, but there are still some details to be resolved.
One of them is cost. The most basic 3D printers range between 200 and 250 euros, but the rest of the investment is consumed by the consumable factor, that is, the filament. It's 15-20 euros per PLA spool, and in other parts of the world, much more. The solution for some enthusiasts is to throw pure DIY at the problem and make homemade filament, however, the ideal would be to skip that step and reuse plastic in a cruder form. That's where Trash Printer points.
Trash Printer: From Plastic Waste to 3D Printing
Trash Printer is not a traditional 3D printer, but rather focuses on the print head. Its developer Sam Smith started working on the Precious Plastic extruder, but his results were not satisfactory. From there, he modified the original design, placed it on a vertical axis, and removed as much weight as possible to enable its installation on a CNC router (controlled with printing software).
After several prototypes, Trash Printer can print objects in low resolution within a work area of 24 x 12 x 4 inches (60.96 x 30.48 x 10.16 centimeters, a limit associated with the router and not the extruder). What's most important? It prints using polypropylene (PP-5) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE-2) flakes, which represent 50 percent of plastic waste by volume.
That is Trash Printer's ultimate goal: to prevent plastic waste from ending up in landfills and give it new opportunities through 3D printing. Optimizing print resolution is not a priority, though nothing stops you from going down that path. The official project page (link below) includes various recommendations as well as technical data. For example, polypropylene has excellent layer adhesion, but not on the surface. Sam's solution was to place a PP layer as a "base" and have the print develop on top of it.
Official site: Click here
